Sabina’s sorry apology deserves more scrutiny
PERHAPS Micheál Martin has been spending too much time studying Vladimir Putin’s covert operations in Ukraine because he sounded alarmingly like a KGB leader this week. Declaring that it was ‘time to move on’ from the furore over Sabina Higgins’ ceasefire letter, he said people needed to have the correct ‘sense of perspective’ about the affair.
It was a polite way of saying we should just all shut up and get on with our lives.
Well, pardon me for believing I can say whatever I like about Sabina Higgins’ behaviour, and for not needing an arrogant Taoiseach to help me decide if an apology is sincere or just a slap in the face.
Mr Martin may have a lofty disdain for any lingering interest in the controversy, but it would have dissolved by now had Sabina Higgins made an unqualified apology for a letter that almost plunged the country into a diplomatic crisis.
She did not, and on top of that, her reason for posting the letter on the President’s official website – so that people who missed it in the newspaper could read it online – was grandiose in the extreme.
NO DISRESPECT to Sabina Higgins: she’s owed a debt of gratitude as a founder of the Focus Theatre, where the Stanislavski method was pioneered in Ireland. But while her insights on method acting might be sought-after, her views on foreign policy are of relevance only in so far as they may reflect the thinking in the President’s household.
Also, her sly dig at critics of her letter – her insinuation that they found the idea of peace and negotiations ‘unacceptable’ – was not just disingenuous but beneath the dignity of the Office of the President.
The response by the Taoiseach and Mrs Higgins was politically crafted to downplay the row and get the President’s office out of a jam. But the tactic also betrayed a haughtiness in the establishment and a stubborn refusal from Sabina Higgins to apologise properly to the Government, which is struggling to do its best by refugees, for contradicting its position that Russia withdraw from Ukraine unconditionally.
Mrs Higgins’ motives were wellmeaning but she saw her words used as a propaganda tool by the Russian ambassador and greeted with horror in Ukraine, where the country’s former first lady said they failed to recognise the country’s ‘existential crisis’.
Like it or not, her ceasefire comments were seen to give succour to the enemies of the West with the potential during wartime of turning this country into a global embarrassment.
She also showed herself woefully out of touch with the national sympathy for Ukraine and our horror at each atrocity committed by Putin’s regime, from the devastating missile strikes at Odesa to the murder of one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen – whose company is responsible for storing and exporting grain – during a particularly brutal bombardment.
She has caused offence on enough fronts to justify a heartfelt-apology, if not a retraction.
Few people believe Putin is trustworthy or that he has any intention of compromising.
IF HE is weakened enough to want to negotiate, it would be better to continue the conflict until he is annihilated. Participating in peace talks without his surrendering his ill-gotten lands casts him as a victor and hands him the chance to invade again.
Putin has made ‘useful idiots’ out of a lot of people. He hoodwinked Angela Merkel into making Germany dependent on Russian gas, and Emmanuel Macron into humiliating himself by keeping diplomatic channels open. We must stop him performing the same trick on the Office of the President of Ireland.